Dangerous Lover by Lisa Marie Rice
He kissed her temple and went out like a light.
Caroline lay on her back, muscles lax with pleasure, inner muscles still so hypersensitive from the powerful orgasm that she couldn’t move her thighs without feeling a jolt of pleasure-pain.
Her body was sending a huge packet of powerful messages of joy to her head, but it was like feeling something happening far away. Her face was numb with shock. Jack tried to move her into his arms, but she turned herself into a deadweight, as if fast-asleep, and could feel his decision to let her be, to let her have her rest. He pulled the blanket up over her shoulders and settled down himself, so close she could feel his heat, but without touching her, asleep in an instant.
If he touched her again, she didn’t know what she would do. Run maybe. Scream. Her jaw muscles tightened.
The meal and the wine lay curdled in her roiling stomach. She had to swallow heavily against the bile rising up her throat.
Her instinct told her to get up out of bed and run—but run where?
Her head ached as she stared dry-eyed up at the dark ceiling, wondering whether some answers lay up there in the shadows, knowing there were no answers at all. Knowing that either she was insane or Jack had been lying to her all along.
Somehow the huge man lying next to her, who’d made love to her for hours, who had been inside her body, who’d given her such mind-blowing pleasure, somehow he wasn’t who he said he was.
It would be wonderful to forget what he’d said. She’d found herself a magnificent lover, sexy as hell, who’d done nothing but help her since he’d arrived. Courteous, gorgeous, fantastic in bed, focused completely on her.
Rich, too, unless Jenna had played a trick on her.
Total dreamboat, Jenna would have said in high school.
But his words ran round and round in her head, in an endless refrain, mocking her. Words that shifted the ground beneath her feet and made her doubt her own senses. Words that made no sense at all coming out of his mouth. Out of the mouth of a man she’d met for the first time four days ago.
We can paint the dining room yellow again, he’d said. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?
Yes, of course she’d like that. A nice canary yellow instead of puke green. Who wouldn’t?
It was very thoughtful of him to think of it.
Except, of course, the last time the dining room had been painted yellow was over six years ago.
Sixteen
When Sanders walked into First Page, a very bad day suddenly turned worse.
Very few customers had showed up all morning and those few were, she suspected, dying from the cold instead of dying for a good read. By eleven o’clock she’d racked up a grand total of $27.15 in sales, her second-worst day. The worst had been Friday, with a grand sales total of zero.
Still, maybe it wasn’t a bad thing that the weather was still so bad people would rather reread their old books than drop by First Page. She found it hard to pay attention to the few people who actually ventured inside the shop. They’d talk, and she’d suddenly zone out, then have to scurry to apologize when it was clear she hadn’t been listening. So, all in all, it was a good thing she was mostly alone with her thoughts.
Except for the fact that she was alone with her thoughts.
No matter which way she looked at it—upside down, inside out—Caroline couldn’t figure out how Jack could know that the dining room had been painted yellow six years ago.
As if it were the first trickle from a cracked dam, now she felt the cold floodwaters of doubt rise in her mind, sickening her. Besides the color of the dining room, she now realized with hindsight that he seemed to have an uncanny knowledge of Greenbriars. That first night, he hadn’t even wanted to be accompanied up to his room. He seemed to know where the tools were kept, where the wine cellar was, even—that first night—where her bedroom was. He’d said he recognized it by her smell, but it didn’t ring true.
He’d known.
How had he known?
And, most horrible of all, how could he at times look faintly familiar to her?
She hadn’t slept all night, had simply stared at the ceiling, mind whirling restlessly and uselessly, until the black outside her window had slowly turned steely gray.
Jack realized that something was wrong. There was no way she could hide her upset from those perceptive dark eyes, and she’d had to pretend the onset of flu to distract him. And then she’d had to stop him from bundling her back into bed with hot tea and seven hundred blankets.
They’d fought about her coming in to work, but she’d been adamant, threatening to drive herself in if he wouldn’t. That had shut him up, and he’d driven her in, tight-lipped and silent.
Fine. Let him be angry. His anger allowed her space and time. She needed to know who he really was. Tonight. They had to talk tonight.
Maybe he’d been too good to be true. Maybe, in her loneliness and grief, she’d conjured the perfect lover out of thin air. Simply invented him.
The bell rang over the door. Another customer. She should be happy, but right now all she wanted was to be alone with her thoughts. Still, customers meant money, so she pasted a smile on her face and walked toward the door.
“Oh.” Caroline stopped when she saw Sanders. He was with another man, who was standing slightly behind him. “Sanders,” she said coolly. What did he want? To apologize? Today was not a good day for him to show up. “I don’t think this is a good idea. I think perhaps you’d better leave.”
“Now, Caroline, don’t be like that. You haven’t heard what I have to say.”
Something had happened to him. The crushed, beaten Sanders had disappeared, and he was back to his old assured self—elegant and in control. He even had that slight smile that looked like a smirk. It did not endear him to her.
“I’m sorry, Sanders, I’m very busy. Maybe some other time.”
He held his expensive gloves in one hand and looked slowly around the bookshop. The very empty bookshop. He took his time and finally brought his gaze around to her.
“I think you’re going to want to hear what I have to say. Or rather, what this gentleman has to say.” He stepped to the side, and Caroline saw the other man clearly now.
He was of medium height, with short sandy hair, big oversized, unfashionable glasses. Whippy rather than thin. Shiny, black, ill-fitting polyester suit, white shirt, shiny black tie. Completely nondescript, except for his eyes. They were light blue, flat, cold.
“Ma’am,” he said, and flipped a leather holder open to reveal a brass badge. “Special Agent Darrell Butler. FBI. New York Field Office.”
FBI?
Was this Sanders’s idea of a joke? Or had he actually called in the FBI because Jack had thrown him out of the shop yesterday? That was going way too far, even for Sanders.
And shame on the FBI for even giving Sanders the time of day. Didn’t they have anything better to do? Crazed terrorists were plotting day and night to blow people and buildings up, and what do they do? Fly across the country because Sanders had had his hair mussed and his feelings hurt.
Caroline rounded on Sanders. “Listen, I know you said you’d sue, but calling in the FBI is just insane. You should know better than that. It’s a totally overblown reaction to what happened yesterday. This is—”
“Ma’am,” the FBI Agent—Special Agent—interrupted. “I think you need to sit down. This isn’t about Mr. McCullin.” He shot Sanders a hostile glance. “Actually, Mr. McCullin shouldn’t even be here. But never mind. We need to talk somewhere, Ms. Lake.”
He wants to talk to me? Bewildered, Caroline led the Special Agent to her desk at the back of the room, separated from the rest of the bookshop by a counter stacked with books. Caroline sat behind the desk, and the Special Agent sat across from her. There were only two chairs in her office, but Sanders went and dragged another chair from out front.
The FBI agent ignored him totally. He placed his briefcase on his knees and took out a folder. He didn’t open it, just set it
“Ms. Lake. I understand you know someone who calls himself Jack Prescott. How long have you known him?”
“Why, I just met—” She stopped suddenly, frowning. “What do you mean—calls himself Jack Prescott? Isn’t that his name?”
Butler opened his briefcase and slid a photograph over her desktop, facing her. It was an enlarged snapshot of Jack in uniform, full face, the kind used as military ID. He looked younger, with a buzz cut and some kind of beret.
“Is that the man you know as Jack Prescott, ma’am?” He thumped the photograph with a rough forefinger.
Caroline swallowed and looked up into cold pale blue eyes. “I have no reason to think that he is anyone else. What is this about? How can this possibly be your business?”
“Just answer the question,” he snapped. “Is that the man you know as Jack Prescott or is he not?”
“Yes.”
“And when did you meet him?”
He’d left his badge open, and the brass reflected the ceiling light. It sat there with the weight of the U.S. government behind it, the shiniest thing in the room. Caroline watched it, as if it could yield up answers.
“Ms. Lake.” He didn’t say anything else. He didn’t have to.
Her throat felt tight. “I met Jack—Mr. Prescott last Friday. He’d just got into town and needed a place to stay. I take in boarders.”
“If he just got into town, how did he know that you have rooms to let?”
“The cab driver told him, on the way in from the airport.”
“What time did he arrive in your shop?”
“Around four, I think. I was thinking of closing up early because the weather was so bad. Nobody had come in all afternoon. He was actually the only person who came into the shop that afternoon.”
“What did he have with him?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“What did he have? What was he carrying?”
“Oh. Well, he had a duffel bag and a suitcase.”
“Were they heavy?”
“I have no idea. He carried them in and carried them out.”
“Was he armed?”
Caroline’s mouth closed with a snap. Yes, he’d been armed, though at the time, she hadn’t known it. She would never have taken an armed man into her home. The silence stretched out.
“Ms. Lake. Answer the question.”
“Is Jack being accused of something?”
“Just answer the question. You can do it here, or in Seattle. Your choice.”
It felt like a betrayal—of a man she wasn’t sure she trusted anymore. Still, Caroline found it hard to tell the truth. “Yes,” she said finally. “He was armed. I didn’t know that at the time.”
“What kind of weapon was he carrying?”
She stared at him. “Are you joking?”
He stared back, gaze flat, utterly impersonal. No, he wasn’t joking.
“Mr.—Special Agent Butler, I know absolutely nothing about guns. It was big and black, that’s all I can say.”
“How do you know he was armed?”
“Someone broke into my house yesterday.” Or rather, Jack told her someone had broken into her house. Caroline hated this, hated second-guessing herself, second-guessing and doubting him. Hated the feeling that she’d been making love—and falling in love—with a fraud. “I found out then that he was—was carrying a weapon. Until then, I had no idea.”
“See, Caroline,” Sanders said suddenly. “You should have known better. You’ve never been a good judge of people. This should teach you a lesson in trusting perfect strangers.”
Butler didn’t turn his head. “Mr. McCullin, one more word out of you and I will have you arrested for obstruction of justice, is that clear?”
“Sorry.” Sanders tried to look chastened, but it wasn’t working very well. He sat back in his chair and crossed his arms.
“Now, Ms. Lake. Did he say where he’d come from?”
Caroline was starting to realize how very little Jack had said about himself. “Well, he said he’d been in Afghanistan. And he said that his father had died very recently, in North Carolina. I don’t know whether he flew in all the way from Afghanistan or whether he’d stopped off in North Carolina.”
“Our records show him as flying in from Africa. From Freetown.”
“The capital of Sierra Leone?” Caroline asked. “What on earth was he doing there? He didn’t say anything about Africa.”
“No? That’s probably understandable, seeing as how he and three other mercenaries massacred a village of women and children.”
“That’s a lie!” The words came from deep inside her. She stood up suddenly. “I refuse to listen—”
The Special Agent didn’t raise his voice, but then he didn’t have to. “Sit down, Ms. Lake, or I will haul you in for obstruction of justice. Sit!”
She sat and folded her hands on the table to keep them from trembling. “There is no way Jack Prescott could do something like that.”
He didn’t even answer, simply stared at her out of his cold eyes.
“Have you been watching the news over the weekend?”
What she’d been doing over the weekend was no business of his. “I fail to see—”
“Answer the question, Ms. Lake,” he interrupted in a hard voice, “or I will take you in to the Seattle office and have you questioned there, which would be much less pleasant for you. Would you like that? Your choice.”
“I—no, um, to answer your question, I haven’t been watching the news over the Christmas holiday.” She’d been too busy with Jack and besides—now that she thought of it—both her radio and her TV set had been on the blink. It was only then that it occurred to her how unusual it was for both the radio and the TV to die on the same weekend. “I don’t really see what that has to do with anything.”
“It’s been all over TV,” Sanders said, leaning forward. “I don’t know how you could have missed it.”
The FBI agent shot Sanders a look that had Sanders lifting his hands—sorry—and sitting back. The agent turned back to her. Caroline kept herself from shivering by force of will. The man had the coldest eyes she’d ever seen.
“Ms. Lake, it appears you are unaware of the fact that six days ago, four U.S. military contractors who worked for a U.S. private security company called ENP Security massacred a village of women and children in Sierra Leone and made off with a fortune in uncut diamonds. Sierra Leonean soldiers appeared at the end and killed three of the military contractors. One escaped with the diamonds.”
What a horrible story. Maybe her TV and the radio had died out of compassion, deciding to spare her this news. “I’m sorry. What does that have to do with me?”
“The man who escaped was Vincent Deaver, the leader of the military contractors. You know him as Jack Prescott. He’s a very dangerous man, and we need your help in bringing him in.”
A sudden gust of gelid air burst into the shop as a customer walked in. Caroline heard the ping of the bell as if from a great distance. Laurel Holly, the mayor’s wife. She had to do something, get up, go to Laurel, get away from this terrible man. She placed her hands flat on the table, but somehow she couldn’t. Something was wrong with her legs.
Sanders got up immediately and went to Laurel. Caroline heard them murmuring, then Laurel left and Sanders turned the OPEN sign around to CLOSED and walked back, never taking his eyes from her face. “No one will bother us now.”
He had the most awful look—triumphant and self-satisfied. Happy. Happy at the thought that she might have been sleeping with a mass murderer.
If there had been a tiny little something inside her, a little softness for Sanders, for old times’ sake, it died right then and there. He wanted Jack to be a monster, a war criminal. It made him happy.
Well, too bad, because she didn’t believe it, not for a moment.
Jack—a mass murderer? Jack? A man who’d kill for diamonds? It wasn’t possible. Sh
The man who’d held her so gently, so self-controlled he constantly reined himself in so he wouldn’t hurt her, not even inadvertently, in the throes of passion. That man wasn’t a murderer.
Of course, he was a soldier. Undoubtedly he’d killed, time and time again, in the line of duty.
Caroline shivered violently, as if her heart had suddenly frozen. The taste of the breakfast she’d choked down this morning was in her mouth. She clamped her jaw shut as bile tickled her throat.
Never mind that she’d had her doubts about Jack. They’d been more along the lines of how he knew her home so well, not whether he might be a monster.
She looked the Special Agent straight in the face. “That’s insane. Jack’s not a mass murderer! And he wasn’t in Africa, he was in Afghanistan this winter. You’ve got the wrong man.”
Agent Butler slid another photograph across the table. Caroline crossed her arms, body language rejecting what she was seeing in the photograph, and stared straight ahead. The agent was a good starer, better than she was. His gaze was steady and unrelenting, and with a shudder and a sigh, Caroline gave in and dropped her eyes to the photograph. Just a flicker of a gaze, but it was enough.
The photograph was very clear.
A slightly leaner Jack, with several days’ growth of beard, in camouflage, holding a big black gun. Dense, blindingly green foliage in the background, a line of wooden huts with tin roofs, African children playing in the dust, African soldiers standing guard.
There was a time stamp in white at the bottom. 11:21 A.M., December 21.
“That’s not Afghanistan,” the FBI agent said.
“No,” Caroline whispered. “It’s not.”
She wanted to pull the photograph closer for a better look, but she couldn’t. She was hugging herself, deeply chilled in the core of her being.
“That was shot by a UNOMSIL soldier in Freetown, seven days ago, just before Deaver headed into the hinterland for a village called Obuja, where there were rumors swirling around about a sackful of diamonds. He caught a pirogue going upriver to Obuja. Twenty-four hours after that photograph was taken, everyone in Obuja was dead, and he had found the diamonds. The UN is still looking for him there, but we’d got word that he’d flown back to the States.”